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Residential hospice nearing LHIN approval

Hospice Quinte's proposed residential hospice is edging closer to a critical approval after obtaining support from executive staff of the South East Local Health Integration Network.

The network has contributed funding of $105,000 per bed per year for the six-bed hospice in Bayside.

It's to be built on three acres of land on Old Highway 2, south of Bayside Secondary School, and donated by the City of Quinte West. The city has also committed $1 million in funds toward the project; those dollars had come from the coffers of the former Sidney Township prior to its amalgamation into the city.

Staff of the LHIN have been reviewing the project's Stage 1 capital submission, an early document in Ontario's capital approval process.

“We will be recommending to our board endorsement of this Stage 1 step in the capital development,” said chief executive officer Paul Huras.

“We're looking at hospice services being provided throughout the entire South East and this is an area where there is a need … a high need.”

There are small residential hospices in Bancroft, Madoc and Picton. Huras said others could be coming to Kingston and Smiths Falls within two years.

“A six-bed hospice makes sense in this community,” Huras said.

Hospice Quinte executive director Jennifer May-Anderson said staff and board members are “really excited” with the LHIN's support thus far.

If approved by the LHIN Jan. 29 and eventually by the Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, she said, “We would be able to accept our first patient in March 2019.”

Hospice Quinte now has five staff and more than 140 volunteers. They help more than 200 patients per year, May-Anderson said. She noted home visiting and other programs will continue.

The opening of a residential hospice is an enormous project for them.

Plans are preliminary, May-Anderson said, but it's been proposed the facility would also have space for administration, meaning all staff would be based in Bayside.

“We would be looking for somewhere between 20 and 25 staff more than what we have now,” she said. They would be registered nurses and personal support workers.

“The goal would be to have 24-hour care.”

Residential hospices are relatively rare, she said: there are 88 in Canada, 60 of them in Ontario and Quebec.

May-Anderson said between 16 and 30 per cent of Canadians have access to that service.

Huras added people will still die at home, in long-term care facilities and in hospitals, but “in many cases a hospice is ideal.”

Hospices allow the management of pain and other patient needs in a home-like environment, he said.

“Some people do not want to die in a hospital,” he said, but dying at home can be “very difficult for a family.”

Huras said six beds is “an appropriate number.

“You don't want this to become an institution. This is very much a home-style environment,” he said.

Huras gave “a lot of credit to the communities that have come together” to make Hospice Quinte's proposal viable.

He also said commitment of workers in the palliative care sector makes such projects succeed.

“It takes a lot of work and a lot of people who have a lot of passion.”

“We provide some operating dollars and there's capital that's provided by the ministry if this is approved,” said Huras.